Among those honored Thursday night at the Alexander Hamilton dinner of the Manhattan Institute was the Democrat who served as governor of New York between 1975 and 1983, Hugh Carey. Before taking over as governor, Mr. Carey was a Democratic congressman from New York from 1961 to 1975. In his remarks, Mr. Carey mentioned proudly that he had been described by the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley, as a “supply-side governor.” And he went on to speak warmly of a policy idea, school vouchers, that has been embraced by many conservatives. He spoke of the need to educate young New Yorkers “not only in public schools, but in all schools.” And he said, “when the public sector and the private sector join together, they can do anything.”

It’s just one data point, but a resonant one. It suggests to us that school vouchers are increasingly moving out of the abstract world of think tanks and the dreams of libertarians and into reality. There are still many New York City politicians – including Republicans like Mayor Bloomberg – who roll their eyes at the mention of vouchers and start talking about how it can’t happen here and start trying to change the subject to charter schools. But the policy debate is starting to get past that. Publicly funded voucher programs have been in place in Milwaukee since 1990 and in Cleveland since 1996. Washington, D.C., began a publicly funded voucher program last year with the support of Democrats like the city’s mayor, Anthony Williams; Senator Feinstein of California, and the editorial board of the Washington Post.

Here in New York City, prominent supporters of school vouchers include the secretary of state of New York, Randy Daniels; a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, Brent Staples; and a former Democratic congressman from Queens, the Reverend Floyd Flake. A state senator, Martin Golden of Brooklyn, in February introduced legislation known as S. 1939, which would provide a state tax credit of up to $3,000 a family for private school tuition. Thirteen other senators have signed on to the bill. There’s already essentially a voucher system in place in New York City that serves thousands of children with certain disabilities. And now Governor Carey is speaking out. It’s terrific to see. The logical next step would be for our current governor to get behind the idea and catch up with Mr. Carey.